Back-to-basics Cooking – Making Soft White Homemade Cheese

Arouse your taste buds to homemade delight. Soft store-bought cheese just cannot compete with this back-to-basics soft cheese recipe. The ingredients are completely up to you. So, bring your taste buds back to what grandma’s kitchen made in days gone by with delicious, fresh and natural homemade soft cheese.

Ingredients for Soft White Homemade Cheese

• 1/2 gallon milk (store bought or dairy fresh whole).
• 1/3 cup lemon juice or white vinegar.
• 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (as per taste – totally optional, leave out if on a salt free diet–remember, part of the salt will be tossed out when you drain the whey).

Directions for Making Soft White Homemade Cheese

1. Place milk in a large sauce pan, add the salt and stir in. If you want the cheese to be yellow instead of white, add 6 drops of yellow, and 2 drops of red food coloring at the time of the salt addition, and stir.
2. Heat over medium burner until bubbly (stirring often so the milk will not stick or burn).
3. When all bubbly (just before boiling), add the lemon juice (or white vinegar), and stir about 20 seconds or so.
4. Remove from heat and stir again. The curds and whey will be separated.
5. Place a colander over a clean fairly deep kettle and line it with a cloth (use clean cheesecloth, soft thin dishtowel, or soft thin muslin cloth, which is larger than the colander).
6. Pour the curds and whey into the cloth over the colander; the curds will be in the cloth, the whey in the kettle.
7. Tie the cheese in the cloth into a tight ball (any string will do).
8. Place a wood spoon across the top of the kettle that now holds the whey.
9. 9. Tie the tight cloth ball to the wood spoon so that it hangs over the kettle and let the ball continue to drain into the kettle. You can squeeze it a little as well.
10. Once the ball is drained well, remove the soft cheese ball from the cloth, place in a container and wrap, or you can press it into ramekins and cover (you can also add other ingredients at the time of flaking, such as bacon bits, pimento, green chile, chopped olives or any tasty choice. More salt can also be sprinkled on the flakes if desired. You can also leave the salt out at the time of cooking, and add it now).
11. Refrigerate the cheese until cold and set. If in a pressed ramekin, release and place on plate.

Using Soft White Cheese

This delicious soft cheese can be spread on crackers, mixed into dips, or baked into casseroles. You can even blend it with homogenized milk to make cheese sauce. Use your imagination, and enjoy the taste of real natural soft home made cheese. Getting back to the basics of real food without additives is what back to basics is really all about, enjoy your cheese!